Tissue characterization using multiscale products of wavelet transform of ultrasound radio frequency echoes

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method for tissue characterization using wavelet transform of ultrasound radio frequency (RF) echo signals. We propose the use of multiscale products of wavelet transform sequences of RF echoes to estimate the scatterer distribution in the tissue. The proposed method is based on the fact that when emitted ultrasound beams interact with scatterers in the tissue, backscattered beams contain singularities corresponding to the location of the scatterers. The singularities will exist in multiple scales of wavelet sequences of the echo signals. Therefore, peaks of wavelet transform multiscale products correspond to the location of scatterers. Estimation of scatterer spacing can be used for tissue characterization. The efficacy of the proposed method was validated in RF echo signals of in-vitro human prostate to characterize normal and cancerous tissue. The results confirm that wavelet transform multiscale products of RF echo signals contain tissue typing information that can be used as an effective tool to differentiate normal and cancerous prostate tissue.